The purpose of a lean warehouse is to minimize waste and enhance value in the product storage process. Some typical warehouse functions can include:

Receiving

Put-Away/Storing

Replenishment

Picking

Packing

Shipping

While all these functions may seem simple, there are many forms of waste that could, and will be apparent in each step. When analyzing the warehouse function steps, some lean principles used to eliminate the wastes and enhance values are:

Understanding the Voice of the Customer (VOC) and determining which activities within the warehouse truly create value and which ones are useful

Creating a Current state Value Stream Map of the warehouse operations to identify and separate Value Added and Non Value Added activities

Creating a future vision state Value Stream Map should be created with reducing the wastes in the warehouse

Creating a warehouse operation based on visual management and real time lean problem solving techniques

Reducing inventories (lowering the water level) in warehouse operations to make issues and problems more visible